


sir that's my emotional support bartender

by rarmaster



Series: YWKON [15]
Category: Tales of Graces, Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Coping with trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Past Abuse, It's Fine This Wasn't The First Murder, It's Legally Sound When The One Murdered Was Abusive Right, Panic Attacks, Queerplatonic Relationships, The Murder Happens Offscreen, XC2 AU, YWKON, all the abuse is in the past also we're just fussing with the fallout, and that trauma is a thing he has to deal with, he's supposed to be here it's a feature not a bug, jade's fine he just hates that emotions are a thing he has, oh yeah minoth from xc2 is here for like a second don't worry about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: In which Jade Curtiss comits murder, but this is not about the murder at all, this is about Jade sorting through his trauma with Malik's help.A YWKON fic.
Relationships: Jade Curtiss & Malik Caesar
Series: YWKON [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1222385
Kudos: 14





	sir that's my emotional support bartender

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT 1/28/2021: HEY!!! so this fic is still extremely importnat to me becuase i love the jademalik dynamic Like A Lot, but you'll note that I've made ywkon lore changes that mean Mythra should be here, and she isn't. The short version of that is mostly it would be a lot of editing for very little pay off. And also is it not enough to jademalik post in isolation--
> 
> this takes place in my largely Symphonia focused Xenoblade Chronciles 2 AU, but you don't need to read the whole AU for context. _[Installment 24](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19933051/chapters/48777194)_ , has the short version of the context, but [the rewrite](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709642/chapters/59724136) with 100k about Jade Curtiss is what I actually recommend you read. 
> 
> housekeeping: XC2 has a system with blades/drivers which the tldr version is just "blades are bound to their drivers via ~magical slavery~" also have multiple lifetimes + lose their memories when they die (I've got a full breakdown of the lore [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20959580))
> 
> further housekeeping: Jade and Malik are both ~~blades~~ flesh eaters, XC2 i hate you for your terminology, anyway, the tldr here is "were once blades but now they're a weird blade/human hybrid and the only upside is they don't need drivers anymore"

“Malik!” Jade calls, slamming his shoulder against the back door of the tavern in a clumsy facsimile of a knock, seeing as his hands are otherwise occupied. “Malik!” he calls again, and it’s on this second call that he realizes where he is, what he is doing, and _why he shouldn’t be here right now,_ which comes in a cruel wake-up call in the manner of his mind properly processing the fact that he is still dragging a _dead body_ around.

Shit. Why didn’t he get rid of this? He’s better than this, smarter than this. He has _plans_ for these exact circumstances, places to drop bodies where no one will notice, or at least certainly where no one will be capable of tracing the murder back to him. ( _Though this happens so rarely, so many years apart, that it would be difficult to trace any of the murders back to him, anyway._ ) So: why didn’t he go there, first? Why is he at Malik’s? Why can’t he really remember the past five minutes?

Are those Malik’s footsteps? Shit.

“Never mind,” Jade calls, a little quieter. Can’t make a ruckus in the middle of the goddamn alley, not when he’s holding a _dead body,_ what is he _doing._ “Actually, I think I can take care of this myself—”

“Nonsense, I’m right here!” Malik calls back, from the other side of the door, and then he pulls it open.

And he stops.

Jade squeezes his eyes shut, for just a moment.

“Jade what the _fuck_ ,” Malik says, eloquently, his voice significantly lowered.

“I’m,” Jade says, but he doesn’t quite know what the fuck. The fact that everything from the past five—was it ten? Fifteen?—minutes is a haze terrifies him. The last thing he remembers is—a blade stabbed clean through with his own weapon, his driver, his _murderer_ acting more like she’d just had to punish an unruly dog than that she’d just murdered her own blade, and—“Sorry,” Jade says, to Malik. He steps off the back porch, the dead woman’s feet dragging all the way. “I shouldn’t have bothered you. I can take care of this, really. I’ll- I’ll be back—”

Why is he so off-kilter, right now? This is not the first abusive driver he’s murdered. This isn’t even the first since Citan. _Why_ did he come to Malik so quickly? Whatever thought that brought him here before disposing of the body is lost along with the last ten minutes of his life.

He’s only made it one more step when Malik interrupts him.

“No, hold on,” Malik says. When Jade spares a glance at him, he shivers, because the way Malik is looking at him right now is much akin to the way one might consider an open book. And not just any book, but a book with large text printed in bold across its pages so that only takes a glance to read the full sentence or three spread between them both. Perhaps it is more like being read like a street sign. “You look like you’re gonna be sick any second now, let me take care of it.”

Jade huffs something that might be a laugh, if the man laughing were not currently being weighed down by a dead body and the reality that he’s inexplicably missing a few minutes of his life. ( _Let it be known for the record: he is not weighed down by regret. Panic and confusion? Yes. Regret? Never._ ) “Malik, really,” he says, and does not think about the way his voice is trembling right now. Normally he is so much better about this. “Between the two of us, who’s the one who has less qualms about such a matter as this, hmm?”

“You’re acting like I’ve never had to dispose of a body, before,” Malik replies, deadpan.

“Well,” Jade begins.

“I’ll repeat myself: You look like you’re gonna be sick, Jade. I think you should head inside.”

Malik’s tone doesn’t leave much room to argue, especially since under the authority he’s throwing around in it there’s a whole well of concern that makes Jade listen. The way to get Malik to stop worrying is to not go on pretending like everything is fine. So Jade drops the body unceremoniously ( _asshole deserves it_ ) and pushes past Malik and through the back hall of the tavern.

And there must… there must be _something_ about it—Jade hates that he doesn’t know what, doesn’t know, after all this time, what exactly makes him so easy for Malik to read—that makes Malik pause because he looks at Jade the whole time and before Jade’s even made it three steps again he says: “Actually, Jade, just sit at the… not the bar, the…”

“I know,” Jade finishes, and plops himself down at the tiny little table they have tucked away in the corner of the kitchen where they can take their own meals away from the patronage if they’d like. As he does this, Malik pokes his head into their storage area, where Minoth is putting things away to close down for the night. It—it really is that late, isn’t it?

Jade can’t remember what he’d been out to get at this time of night, actually. Was it important? Is he missing more time than he realized?

Malik and Minoth’s conversation filters in and out through Jade’s haze.

“Malik what the _actual shit_.”

“I can take care of it if you’d rather! But I don’t want to leave Jade—”

“No, no, I got it! Whatever! You act like I haven’t disposed of a body before.”

“I appreciate it.”

And then there’s footsteps, and the back door’s hinges creak, the door slams shut. Malik walks past. Bottles clink around from the direction of the bar, then scrape as—presumably—Malik pulls one or two out. Thud. Liquid pouring. Bottles clinking as they’re returned.

Malik slides a glass across the table to Jade. “If you want it,” he says, sitting down in the other chair, since the table’s only big enough for two. “Just ginger ale, might help calm your nerves. And your stomach.”

Jade doesn’t touch it. He shifts so he’s sitting a little straighter, though, despite how his shoulders ache with tension, wish to slump with exhaustion. Now that he’s sitting in the place he calls home, adrenaline slipping away from him, he _does_ feel like he’s about to be sick. He tries not to think about it.

“I won’t make you drink,” Malik insists. “But I mean it when I say it might help.”

“Pass, for right now,” Jade says.

Malik shrugs. “Alright.” He leans back in his chair, one arm slung over the back of it, the other resting on the table, knuckles lightly drumming against the wood a few times. “You wanna talk about it, or nah? I don’t doubt she deserved it—I know how you work—so this isn’t meant to be an accusation or anything. But you’re worrying me a little, coming back before you’d even gotten rid of her. Where’d you find her, anyway? It’s not like we’ve had anyone through here recently who would’ve needed…”

“Just happened to…” Jade begins. His vision is blurry. He takes his glasses off, starts to polish them on the edge of his coat, remembers he’s covered in blood. Remembers the glasses are a fashion statement. He can’t see any better without them, though, so they weren’t the problem.

“Please tell me you didn’t barge into someone’s home, Jade, even if they were being an asshole—” Malik interjects into Jade’s silence.

Jade shakes his head. Returns his glasses to his face. His chest is so tight. “No, I didn’t,” he promises, though. “It was—” He can’t seem to find the words. Usually he doesn’t have this problem. Instead of words, memories are all that bounce around in his mind. An alleyway, dark. A single streetlamp in the distance, not yet put out. A woman, with her blade pinned to the wall— “I walked past, and there was screaming in the alley…”

“You intervened,” Malik finishes.

Jade nods.

“The blade?” Malik asks.

Jade opens his mouth, but he can’t say it. _She killed him._ It would be so easy, but the words are lodged in his throat, trapped under locks and keys that have never been there before. _He was begging for mercy and she killed him and—_ the words she said still ring in his ears, as she bent down to pluck the dormant core crystal off the ground.

_“Maybe you’ll behave better without your memories—”_

( _And all over again it’s—_

_“Do you want to know how many lifetimes it took you?”_

_—that cold, bright hallway, the ground covered in ice and Citan smirking even as he faces death—_

_“Honestly, I wasn’t even counting.”_

_laughing as he admits he’s the reason Jade is missing memories, memories, so many memories—_ )

“Jade?” Malik’s voice cuts through the memory, sharp and concerned. “Stay with me.”

Jade breathes. He’s trembling, so he grips his knees and tries to pull himself together.

“I’m,” Jade says, but he isn’t fine.

“Look, don’t worry about telling me what happened, it doesn’t matter,” Malik interjects. He’s leaning forward in his chair now, attention all on Jade, like he doesn’t want to stop looking, is afraid of what might happen if he does. “Just stay with me right now, alright? Think you can stand? I want to get you doing something concrete, something else to think about, but…”

Jade responds by getting to his feet. He feels light-headed, a little dizzy, but he knows what Malik is doing. It’s harder to get caught up in the past when you’ve got something concrete in the present to focus on, a task you need to do, and so on. Architect, he really is that bad off right now, though, isn’t he? When was the last time he had an episode this bad? It’s been years.

“Don’t push yourself,” Malik warns.

“I can do this,” Jade insists. “You’re just going to have me do dishes.”

“Only if you want to,” Malik says. “I was thinking we’d start with coffee, actually.”

“Coffee?” Jade repeats.

Malik grins. “Exactly the way Anna makes it, just because it takes forever and a billion steps.”

Jade laughs. Alright. Alright, he can do that. He likes thinking about Anna, anyway.

So he lets Malik talk through every step of making coffee—throwing out the old batch, rinsing the pot, measuring the beans, adding the water, and so on, all painstakingly slow and talked through in as much detail as Malik can muster. They get in a brief argument about how if they’re making the coffee as Anna would, she wouldn’t even measure the right amount of coffee beans, would she? And no she wouldn’t but that’s not the point of this. Ah but can’t it be the point of this? What’s stopping it?

And then the coffee is brewing and there’s nothing to do right away, but at least Jade’s feeling a little less lightheaded. Malik turns on the radio to the only station that’s playing at three in the morning, some talk show about ghost stories—the noise meant to be a distraction, to fill the quiet so nothing else does. Jade listens with partial interest, meanwhile stripping of his gloves and coat and commandeering the sink they use for things that aren’t clean dishes to scrub the blood out of his clothes. ( _He probably should have done this before he handled the coffee, but that’s Malik’s problem for not thinking of it._ )

Jade focuses on the warmth of the water and the weight of his wet clothes, on the story one of the host tells about a field somewhere in backwater Tethe’alla haunted by the ghost of a furious mother looking to avenge her children ( _he tries not to think of Myyah, because the comparison is a stretch—but if any one of them were to come back as a ghost and haunt the populace, Jade thinks it would be her_ ). Halfway through scrubbing his coat he stops, realizing he forgot to empty his pockets because he almost never has anything in them, but this time…

He reaches in, pulls out a dormant core crystal.

“Malik,” he says, holding the crystal up without turning around, because this is absolutely not a thing he can deal with, at the moment.

Malik’s snatching it out of Jade’s hands before he even speaks. “Got it,” Malik says. “Don’t worry about it, alright? I’ll get it taken care of.”

“Thank you,” Jade says, and lets his attention be reclaimed by the radio ( _having moved on from ghost stories to what they had for dinner—“Well it was dinner for everyone else, but for me? It was breakfast.” “Hah, guess it’s almost time for lunch then, isn’t it!”_ ) and the task at hand.

It’s alright. He’s alright.


End file.
